This month I’ve selected five of my favorite shiny, soft, and bold decor items that I’m lovin’. They’re also decor staples that I think every cozy home should have: a sturdy tea pot, whimsical accents, decorative spice shakers, a comfy reading chair, and stylish coasters.

You might even say they would be my first picks were I ever stranded on a deserted island…after water, food, my hot water bottle and wifi that is. After all, my designer island straw-hut will need appropriate accessories.

This year’s early-summer weather in Iqaluit has had its ups and severe downs. It has been cold, grey, and quite uninspiring for home decorating. On the downside, it has brought lots of fog and ice into town that has drawn a number of polar bears near our house lately – meaning that we can’t wander far from home (at least not without ammunition or bear spray). On the upside of it though, it has meant that bug season has been delayed enough for me to spend more time in the front yard doing some landscaping.

I was initially thinking to do just one or two small things to add some curb appeal to our place over the summer. Nevertheless, once one project was started I began finding other little things I could do to improve our curb-side look and my ‘to-do’ list quickly snowballed.

This month I’m starting a new section of ARCTICdeco called My Favorite Things. I figure if I can’t have everything I covet, I may as well write about them and hope that one day they’ll be mine. You’re going to love this month’s line up too!

Today my husband and I took the day off to wander through Sylvia Grinnell Park (one of the nearby territorial parks) and have a tundra picnic. It was a perfect Arctic spring day: +6°C, sunny and no wind.

A few weeks ago, J and I surprised everyone by running off and getting married (more or less)! Granted, there wasn’t that much running considering we did it at a small ceremony at our home here in Iqaluit, by the sea-ice.

It was a elopement of sorts; we told no one, planned it at the last minute, and just barely managed to rangle a few of our closest friends and family together for the event. It was the most perfect kind of wedding for us and it couldn’t have been a better day!

It’s been awhile since I last posted – but I’m happy to report there’s been LOTS of progress on the house. I’ll be updating more over the coming weeks with more pictures of our progress.

One of the challenges with renovating is that you rarely complete a room entirely before starting another project or room, and right now we have quite a few ‘nearly finished’ or ‘just started’ rooms. I’ve been wanting to wait until they are just right, but am starting to realize that may never happen, so I’ll share with you some of the in progress pics for the time being.

Today I’m sharing with you the feature wall I’ve created in my office/library/music room/studio. I wanted to create a monochrome, geometric look with minimal work/cost, and ended up settling on these wall decals from Urban Walls on Etsy.

I’m enjoying a lot of the paint-dipped motifs that I’ve been seeing lately and with a bit of spare paint on a sunny afternoon, I decided to try some out for myself. I’ve also been on a geometric kick lately too, so I figured I’d have a little fun with a scruffy old IKEA FROSTA stool we had lying around.